1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of network connected devices, and more particularly, to the extraction of data related to users of such networks.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Prior to setting forth the background of the related art, it may be helpful to set forth definitions of certain terms that will be used hereinafter.
The term “cellular communication network” as used herein in this application, is defined as any network based communication system that is based upon geographical partition of space into cells. Each cell is provided with at least one base station that manages the communication therein. Each cell comprises a plurality of cell sectors, wherein each sector is usually associated with a physical network end point that enables the communication (either wireless or wire-based) with a network-connected device.
The term “User Equipment” (UE) or “network-connected device” as used herein in this application, is any device that is provided with network connectivity, usually over a cellular communication network, and that is uniquely affiliated with a particular user and therefore associated with the particular user related data, or user profile. These network-connected devices may be, but are not limited to: cellular phones, Personal Device Accessories (PDA), portable computers with wireless connectivity (WiFi, WiMax etc.), smart payment card (credit and debit card having a network identifier) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags.
Traditionally, statistic methods or any large scale marketing research are considered human labor intensive, expensive and extensive, time consuming. Further limitations are that these statistics researches are made with a relative small sample, and non up-to date or non available for small granularity of time-space units. Such obstacles result in an inaccurate space related data with time stamp that highly differ from the transaction time of the database.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,742B1 which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety discloses a method which utilizes characteristic feature of mobile telephone systems in which the location of the terminal is always known to the system with location area precision and that the geographical network topology is known to the network planning system. The tracing system includes three functional parts: a first part provides the mobile telephone system with the connection number of the traced terminal as an enquiry input, and in response to the input it receives information on where a location area of subscriber should be enquired for. The second functional part asks for the subscriber's location area and receives in response a location area code, which identifies the location area unambiguously. The third functional part searches the location area table for information corresponding with the subscriber's location area and attends to reporting on the results.
Currently, there is no available method for determining how many idle UE from any given network provider were admitted or not admitted and identify their provider affiliation A method is therefore needed to determine and record the number of any idle UE in each cell sector (location area) aggregate by provider code into cellular provider's segments.